Forces inside and outside community colleges are changing the context for performance and mandating new conceptions of effectiveness. This article addresses the future of institutional effectiveness in community colleges. Its emphasis is on what is measured and why, beginning with a retrospective look at early efforts in effectiveness, moving to an overview of models and methodologies in use today, and closing with a scenario for the future. A significant portion of this article focuses on contextual conditions facing community colleges and their implications for effectiveness. The article closes with a discussion of effectiveness as paradox--an interpretation requiring colleges to simultaneously pursue contradictory approaches to effectiveness to get in front of the change curve.